Fixed Income trading desk

I'm currently applying to an internship position at the biggest investment bank where I live (think Brazil, Russia, India, China). If I get selected for this position, I'll be working as the Trader's assistant on the bank's fixed income prop trading desk. I've already gone through the first interview, which was with a senior HR analyst. I asked a lot of questions, and one of them was about what kind of product I would be dealing with. She told me it was credit.

So, now comes my question to you guys. I'm more interested in fixed income than equities because I've always read here that it was more quantitative. But I've also read here that credit is not that quantitative although it is part of fixed income. Being an electrical engineering student, I'd like to work with a product where I could put part of the knowledge I acquired on college into pratice (calculus, linear algebra, time series, PDEs, etc...). Is that the case? What about structured credit and credit derivatives? Will I have some contact with them working on this desk?

Now, just to clarify one thing. I also like fundamental analysis, but I think I'd be happier and better off doing something more quantitative (and by quantitative I mean something more quantitative than valuation), but not to the level a quant does.

I didn't ask her these questions because I thought they were too specific. The next interview will be with the Trader I will (hopefully) work with and with the head of the desk. I will sure ask them these questions, but I'd be grateful if someone here could shed some light on this.

4 Comments
 

Ok, thanks for the reply. And how quantitative are those fields within credit? Am I right when thinking that Structured is the most quantitive, then Derivates, IG and HY as least quantitative?

IG (is it the same as High Grade?) is about trading credit for huge multinational companies (low risk, AAA), right? How quantitative is it on average? How quantitative can it get at most? What about the other products you mentioned, derivstrading? I'm not being lazy, I've searched (actually, I'm still searching) for answers in this forum, but the answers I've come upon don't get much deep into the details of each product.

Thanks again!

 

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